Public Health, Vaping, and More
City Journal Audio
Manhattan Institute
4.7 • 656 Ratings
🗓️ 4 October 2017
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
John Tierney joins Aaron M. Renn to discuss the federal government's efforts to limit electronic cigarettes (vaping), and the corruption of the public health profession more generally.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, public health officials combatted epidemics of cholera and dysentery through improvements in water and sewage systems. In its modern form, however, this once-noble profession acts largely as an advocate for progressive causes, with trivial priorities including taxes on soda, calorie counts for restaurants, and free condoms.
In recent years, public health officials in America have even turned against vaping—the most effective antismoking product ever created. "The public-health establishment has become a menace to public health," Tierney writes in City Journal.
John Tierney is a contributing editor to City Journal. He spent more than two decades as a reporter and columnist with the New York Times.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm City Journal editor Brian Anderson. |
| 0:11.2 | Thanks for joining us for the 10 Blocks podcast featuring urban policy and cultural commentary with City Journal editors, contributors, and special guests. |
| 0:22.6 | Hello, this is Aaron Wren, contributing editor at City Journal. And I'm joined today by my fellow |
| 0:29.3 | contributing editor, John Tierney, to talk about his article, The Corruption of Public Health, |
| 0:34.4 | which appears in the summer edition of City Journal. So, John, thanks for, |
| 0:38.5 | thanks for joining me. Thanks, Aaron. I think one of the reasons they picked me to do this is because |
| 0:44.3 | I wrote an article last year called Libertarians in Convenience. And one of the things that I |
| 0:50.2 | noticed in an article was that so many of these progressive activists are fighting as hard |
| 0:56.6 | as they can to legalize pot. |
| 0:58.5 | At the same time, they're trying to crack down on vaping. |
| 1:01.7 | And I couldn't quite understand why anybody would hate vaping. |
| 1:05.6 | And this article really explains that why do they hate vaping so much? |
| 1:10.1 | Or maybe who hates vaping and why? |
| 1:13.1 | It's progressive public health activist. That was a great piece, by the way, he did. Thank you. |
| 1:18.0 | And you're right. There is this bizarre libertarianism on the left. I mean, it's pseudo-libertarianism and that it's fine to vape marijuana. That would be all right. |
| 1:30.8 | But the war in vaping is just the strangest thing, |
| 1:35.7 | and it comes out of this sort of prohibitionist streak of the left. The progressors have had this since the original progressors of the 1920s. They were among the leaders to ban alcohol. And, |
| 1:41.1 | you know, it's the old joke about the left left that everything that is not mandatory is forbidden, basically. |
| 1:47.0 | And so they, after the dangers of smoking became evident, the public health establishment spoke out forcefully against him in 1964. |
| 2:01.6 | But at that point, the public health establishment was really still considered itself doing public things, |
| 2:06.6 | but they would do public education. |
| 2:08.6 | They would do, you know, their tradition was doing public projects to stop infectious diseases from spreading and doing vaccines. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Manhattan Institute, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Manhattan Institute and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.